FIG. 6 is a flow chart showing one example of boot processing from a shutdown of an OS in a conventional personal computer system or apparatus. First of all, when the shutdown or termination of the OS is carried out (S61), a BIOS performs shutdown processing necessary for respective devices (S62) and then turns off the power of the personal computer system or apparatus (S63). Subsequently, when a user powers on to start the system (S64), the BIOS executes a POST (S65), and after completion of the POST, the OS is booted or launched (S66).
Thus, when the personal computer system is booted from a power-off state, it is necessary for the BIOS to execute the POST for diagnosis to verify that the system is operating normally as well as for initialization of connected peripheral equipment. Accordingly, when the personal computer system is caused to shift from a non-working or inactive condition to a working or active condition, the time from power on until the POST terminates is indispensable.
However, the time required to execute the POST tends to become longer because of an increase in the peripheral equipment connected with the system, an increase in the functions that the BIOS supports, etc. Therefore, various technologies for simplifying the POST to speed up booting by omitting initialization processing, shortening code optimization processing, etc., have hitherto been proposed to reduce the time required to execute the POST.
On the other hand, there has been proposed a technique to reduce the time required from a paused or sleep state until the system restores to an available or enabled state, by using a power management or saving mode (Standby, Hibernate, etc.) that is a stand-by state, instead of powering off the system.
However, there are limits on the simplification and the speed-up of the POST processing. On the other hand, the peripheral equipment connected with the personal computer system and the functions supported by the BIOS ever increase more and more, so it is becoming difficult to achieve enough effects to shorten the time required for the POST processing.
On the other hand, a standby (Standby), in which the system shifts to a power management mode while holding the state of the system during the operation of the OS in a volatile memory, requires a short time until the system restores to an available state, but the system might be subject to the danger that the data held by the memory might be lost if the main power supply is cut off or the battery runs short during the standby. Therefore, when the system is brought into a non-working condition, there is a demand that the operation of the system should be terminated and placed into the non-working state, instead of being brought into a standby state.
In addition, in a hibernation (Hibernation) or hibernate (Hibernate), in which the state of the system under operation of the OS is preserved or saved to a hard disk that is a nonvolatile recording medium and then the operation of the system is terminated, there is little danger of loss of the data. However, in order for the system to restore to a usable state, execution of the POST is needed prior to the use of the system, so the time needed for restoration is not significantly reduced in comparison with the case where the system is booted from power off, thus leaving the problem unimproved that it takes time to restore the system from a non-working state to a working state.
Accordingly, the present invention is intended to provide an apparatus with a standby mode, such as a personal computer system, etc., and a BIOS and an OS therefor, as well as a boot method for an apparatus with a standby mode, in which the apparatus can be rapidly or quickly shifted from a non-working condition to a working condition thereby to shorten a waiting time in a remarkable manner by omitting initialization (POST) processing to be executed upon shifting from the non-working condition to the working condition.